During the past few years, use of EDC in clinical trials has grown as sponsor companies have moved from pilot EDC implementations to enterprise-wide adoption strategies. Health Industry Insights predicts that investments in EDC solutions will increase at a 14.7% compound annual growth rate and total more than $3.1 billion for 2006 to 2011. Chris Connor, a senior research analyst at Health Industry Insights, said last year was a “tipping point” for EDC as the adoption rate nearly doubled from 24% in 2005 to 45% by the end of 2007.

Connor estimates that today nearly half of all new clinical trials are initiated using EDC. “Today we’re on the verge of an explosive growth for EDC and we expect the industry will never be the same,” Connor said. CenterWatch survey results from investigative sites corroborate this surge in EDC adoption rates. While only 16% of sites were required to use EDC by 2000, that number has grown rapidly since 2004, when some 70% of sites were using EDC systems. In addition, the CenterWatch survey shows that 99% of sites are using EDC in at least one of their trials, while 73% of sites use EDC for at least one-fourth of their trials. In addition, 36% of sites use EDC for at least one-half of their trials. And 2% of sites reported that they no longer even collect any data for case report forms on paper.

While survey respondents have experience with various types of EDC, 32% of sites have used Internet-based EDC, which sends data online to a central server. Another 29% have experience with interactive voice response systems (IVRS), which use the telephone as a means of inputting data. Other electronic data collection methods used at sites include patient diaries (23%) and faxes (12%).

The Industry Trend featured on this page was excerpted from

PAREXEL’s Bio/Pharmaceutical R&D Statistical
Sourcebook 2008/2009

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